Author Archives: Brian Penny

Brian Penny

Brian Penny is a former Business Analyst and Operations Manager at Bank of America turned whistleblower and freelance writer. His work appears in Huffington Post, Fast Company, Paste Magazine, High Times, Forbes, The Street, and more.

Marketing is a constantly evolving beast. Accordingly, the plethora of web platforms available to harness its potential keeps growing with it.

It can be difficult to predict which marketing channels will provide the best bang for your company’s buck. It also doesn’t help that the industry is filled with snake-oil salespeople and buzz terms like CRO, growth hacking, influencer marketing, and SEO.

To help you sort through it all, we’ve scoured the trade shows, talked to marketing and ad agencies, and figured out which marketing trends are defining 2017 and set to continue into 2018

1. Mobile Video

Mobile video is king these days, with $5.4 billion spent on video advertising (which accounts for 35% of total online spending). Dreamworks CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg explains that Hollywood is taking notice, spending the past three years focused on creating short, 3- to 5-minute video clips with Game of Thrones production levels aimed directly at mobile audiences.

Quality matters in every aspect of content created for your brand. Look at YouTube – this online video platform was created so anyone can create an account and generate content. To stick out, top-earning YouTubers like PewDiePie, Smosh, and WatchMojo built quality HD videos using professional equipment, staff, and scripts.

In doing so, they grew from obscurity to stardom and built revenue machines capable of competing with media juggernauts like Eminem, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry, who have tens of millions of followers on every platform they choose to participate in. PewDiePie alone ended 2016 with a net worth of $90 million, more than Hillary Clinton, Seth Rogen, even Kendrick Lamar.